The problem

You come back from a hike or a ride with a GoPro MAX and a folder of .360 files, and you work on Linux. Those files are not ordinary videos. Each one holds two HEVC video streams, one per lens, packed in a camera-specific cube layout, plus a separate track of GPMF telemetry with the GPS record of where you were and how fast you were going. Long recordings are split across several chapter files.

A generic video player sees two strange video streams and ignores the telemetry. The usual way out is a conversion step before you can even watch the footage, and the GPS data ends up in yet another tool.

The usual way

Convert each .360 file to a flat panorama, open it in a 360° player, and load the GPS track separately to see where you were.

With GoBro

Open the original file. The two lens streams are reconstructed on the GPU as it plays, and the map, telemetry and graphs follow the frame on screen.

GoBro is built on evidence from real files: its reconstruction and timing were verified on recordings and photos from a GoPro MAX (2025), and the findings are written up in the repository.

How it works

GoBro is one desktop player, gb-player, plus a set of command-line tools that share its libraries. The player is for watching and framing; the exporter, gb-render, turns that framing into a video.

1. WatchOpen a .360, MP4 or MAX photo in gb-player. Drag to look around, click the route on the map to jump there.
2. FrameSwitch to Capture mode, pick a view and an aspect ratio, and save stills or the framing as a settings file.
3. ExportRun gb-render with those settings to produce an MP4 with the map, speed, height and time drawn in.

Made for looking back at a trip

No conversion step

Original .360 files play directly, with both lenses decoded in lockstep. Choose rectilinear, fisheye, Little Planet, the full panorama or either raw lens.

Everything in step with the frame

The map marker, telemetry panel and height/speed graph always show the GPS record nearest the frame on screen. Positions are never interpolated or invented.

A map you can click

The route is drawn on OpenStreetMap, travelled part in orange. Click it to seek there; if you passed that spot twice, pick which time.

Ready-to-share videos

gb-render exports H.264 or HEVC with a route map, telemetry text and graphs, over the picture or on a side panel, even across chapters, and faster than real time if you like.

Your files stay yours

Recordings are opened read-only. Exported videos carry no GPS track or camera serial numbers, and the map server only ever sees the area you are viewing.

Tools for the curious

Command-line tools inspect the container and GPMF metadata, export GPS to GPX, GeoJSON, CSV or JSON, and extract exact frames, all with versioned JSON output.

What it supports today

GoBro is in its first public development series (0.1) and is working towards v1.0. It runs on Linux: Ubuntu 22.04 or newer is the supported baseline, and .rpm packages are also built and tested on Fedora.

• Camera: the GoPro MAX (2025) is the first and only validated camera.
• Videos: MAX dual-stream .360 files, and single-stream MP4 shown flat with zoom and pan. Chapters open in order and play on from one to the next.
• Photos: MAX JPEG photos, with spherical views for 360° and superwide shots, their position on the map and their capture settings.
• Audio: the stereo track plays in sync. It stays silent while you scrub or seek, so you never hear sound fragments.
• Display: needs an OpenGL 3.3 (or OpenGL ES 3.0) driver; the Mesa drivers in Ubuntu 22.04 are enough.

Not there yet: TimeWarp and TimeLapse videos and lens-mode names for videos (both planned for v1.0), the MAX spatial audio track, hardware decoding, stabilization and a single timeline across chapters in the player. Other GoPro models have not been verified.

Get started

There are no prebuilt downloads yet: you build GoBro from source. The quickstart script does it in one go on Ubuntu.

The script installs packages with sudo. It checks for missing build packages (compiler, CMake, FFmpeg, Qt 6, SDL2) and installs them with apt-get, which may ask for your password. Use --no-install-deps to install them yourself.

1. Build and test

git clone https://github.com/arturormk/gb-cplusplus.git
cd gb-cplusplus
# installs missing packages, builds, runs the tests
./quickstart.sh

The binaries end up in build/dev/install/bin. Run from a terminal, the script also offers to build a .deb or .rpm package and install it system-wide, so the tools are on your PATH.

2. Play a recording

cd build/dev/install/bin
./gb-player /data/gopro/GS010047.360

# open straight into the full panorama, two minutes in
./gb-player --time 120 --view panorama /data/gopro/GS010047.360

Drag to look around, use the mouse wheel to zoom, and press 1 to 8 to switch views. Space plays and pauses. If you’d rather not touch the network, --map-no-network uses cached map tiles only.

3. Export a video

Frame the shot in the player’s Capture mode and save the settings as framing.ini. Then start from the commented example for the overlays:

./gb-render --example-settings > ride.ini

# a quick 10-second draft to check the layout
./gb-render /data/gopro/GS010047.360 --settings framing.ini \
    --settings ride.ini --duration 10 --draft -o test.mp4

# the full export
./gb-render /data/gopro/GS010047.360 --settings framing.ini \
    --settings ride.ini -o ride.mp4

--dry-run reports the range, frame count and map tiles without rendering anything.

4. Take the GPS track elsewhere

./gb-telemetry --format gpx /data/gopro/GS010047.360 > route.gpx

The player can do the same from its telemetry panel, for every chapter of a recording at once.

Learn more

• README: building, every tool at a glance, and the JSON report formats.
• gb-player: views, keyboard controls, Capture mode, the map and its tile policy.
• gb-render: the settings file in full: placement, fields, map scale, graphs and output.
• Format support and blueprint: what has been verified, what hasn’t, and where the project is going.
• Issues: bug reports, and recordings that don’t play as they should.

GoBro is licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later. It uses the system FFmpeg, Qt 6 and SDL2 libraries under their own licences, and map data is © OpenStreetMap contributors. GoBro is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by GoPro.